Scotts Brewing Company
What makes your venue the Best Gastropub in New Zealand?
Scotts Brewing Company is privately owned business with 16 years experience in brewing quality beers and ciders onsite, some of which have become famous in our region such as our Nineteen 05 Golden Ale, you will find on tap in most local pubs around North Otago and Waitaki Valley. Our Gluten Free Pale Ale which is sold nation wide in supermarkets, liquor stores and a number of restaurants around New Zealand.
Along with our quality brews on the menu you will find carefully selected local and NZ wines and spirits that showcase our Otago region.
Our food menu is creative with a range of locally sourced produce, meats and cheeses. We have simple pub dishes such as pork ribs and pulled pork loaded fries but elevate these dishes by smoking the meats onsite for 3 hours and slow cooking them in our own cider and beers.
Our pizza bases are made fresh in our kitchen each day are taken to the next level with the choice of quality local ingredients, fresh produce and house made sauces.
Customers enjoy the experience of seeing our chefs smoking the meats outside in our beer garden and watching the beer being brewed and bottled onsite while dining with us
Our staff are a mix of locals and travellers, all friendly, bubbly and ready to give our customers the best hospitality experience here at Scotts Brewing Co. Travellers have described our brewery as a New Zealand gem, locals come to us regularly and all have their favourite Scotts pizza and brew.
Our relaxed atmosphere of casual walk in dining, ordering at the bar or via QR code from your table, live music with local offerings and elevated pub style meals make Scotts Brewing Co a strong contender for the Gastro pub award.
Describe the experience your customers have at your establishment – what is your food and beverage offering and why do people come back for more?
Our brews and food are consistent and always renown for good quality. Our customers love that there is something for everyone and everyone is welcome, from family to friends (including your four legged friends. )
Owner/Director of Scotts Brewing Company Phillip Scott is coeliac so the vision was to establish and provide enjoyable Gluten Free brews and delicious gluten free food, we have been very successful in building that reputation over the years which is why a lot of customers seek our establishment or return on a regular basis.
When customers arrive at Scotts they don't just order their food and drinks, they get a story about the beers they are choosing, they get recommendations from the staff for food, they experience our food and beer being made infront of them.
Tell us how you showcase NZ produce / offerings? Does your menu change with the season and how is it locally influenced. How do you accommodate allergy and dietary requirements?
Our biggest showcase is our own Scotts brews - They are made of mostly local (South Island grown) hops from Canterbury and the Marlborough region and grain from Canterbury all brewed onsite here in Oamaru. We have 18 taps displayed in both our front and back bar of all our own brewed beers and ciders on offer. Some are old staples to the menu and some are limited editions brews.
We use a range of locally sourced food on our menu from Whitestone Cheese to Mean Greens lettuce grown and produced here in Oamaru. Our pizza cheese is from Milligans, just around the corner. We have a large variety of River T Wines on our wine list from Kurow, 45 minutes up the valley and we have NZ Whiskey on our spirits menu which is also based here in Oamaru. 90% of our menu can be made Gluten Free, we have a separate fryer for Gluten Free foods. We also offer vegan and vegetarian dishes on our menu always. Seasonal salads are made with locally sourced vegetables.
What are your key points of difference and how have you managed to deliver them?
Our casual, relaxed setting with our upbeat staff, live music, large outdoor beer garden all contribute to our famous Scotts atmosphere.
You don't just dine at Scotts Brewing, you get the whole experience from watching the beer being brewed, to hearing the rattling of the bottling machine in the background.
We only offer Scotts beers on tap and you can try beers that are being made right in front of you.
Our location cannot be beat in Oamaru, centrally located at the foot of the victorian precinct, overlooking Oamaru harbour, dining with a seaside view from our deck.
We have a large outdoor beer garden perfect for these summer evenings, as-well as a large indoor area we you can cosy into in the winter.
Best Known for:
Fresh homemade pizza
Smoked meats
Coeliac friendly brews
Please describe your commitment to sustainability.
Sustainability is important to Scotts Brewing Co. We have successfully completed many projects with more on the go to make our business more sustainable, economic and environmentally friendly.
Our latest project was to modify our refrigeration and tank cooling system to capture the heat produced from the glycol cooling. This creates a free source of thousands of litres of hot water to fill our brew kettle with on a daily basis.
Our Fermenters are set up to naturally carbonate our beer reducing the use of bottled CO2.
Scotts Brewing Co beer packaging consists of corrugated flute which has a high recovery rate and recyclability capacity and glass bottles which are made out of 66% recycled glass.
Spent grain from our brew has high nutrient content so is put into drums for local cattle farmers to collect and feed their stock with.
We have eliminated the use of disposable filtration cartridges in our brewery by installing a centrifuge to clarify our beer.
Currently we have two major projects underway for 2024 which is installing a Solar power generation system to produce 60 KW of solar energy to power our brewery operation.
We have also purchased a nitrogen generator which allows us to capture the nitrogen from our environment and use this gas in brewery operations to replace the use of bottles CO2 in bottles.
Have you won any awards in the recent past? Tell us about them.
The Oamaru business collective started in 2021 and Scotts Brewing Company won Oamaru Business of the Year and best hospitality business award voted by the public. We have also won Morton Coutts trophy for innovation, an International beer awards trophy for the best beer packaging and had multiple accolades at NZ Beer awards
Please describe how you create ambience.
We have regular Sunday sessions every week with live music and great company. Locals come consistently to meet with friend and family, a lot refer to Scotts Sundays as church. Travellers are pleasantly surprised when they walk by and can't help but to stop in especially when the weather is great and bands are set up outside in our beer garden.
We participate in all the large events that are iconic to Oamaru such as Steampunk, Harbour street jazz and Victorian fete weekends, by putting on live music, staff dress ups, we create brews to match the theme and food specials to really get into the spirit.
We have also created many successful events our self, Scotts Winter Festival (live music, food and winter brews) Hijinks and Hootenanny, which is a country themed event with bucking bull dress up and dancing and many more.
Musician's approach Scotts for gigs as they know we are renowned for having live bands and good music here on a regular basis, we love having local musicians here often as a hub for them to perform, as well as having touring gigs passing through.
Our atmosphere would be described as casual and relaxed, but with high quality offerings. We have well designed lighting both indoors and out to create visual appeal, if we don't have live music playing we have good music playing in the back ground. It's also important customers feel good here at Scotts, which is why we have 3 log burners for the winter (one outside) and a blanket box for that extra cosy atmosphere.
There's nothing better than the smell of beer brewing wafting through the bar around lunchtime, or the smokey BBQ smell from the ribs smoking outside in the beer garden. These are classic Scotts Brewing Co smells that add to the ambience.
